For more than 40 years, Gexcon has been involved in the investigation of many high-profile accidents such as Buncefield, Piper Alpha, TWA 800, and the P-36 platform (Brazil).
Leaders in the oil and gas industry and safety engineers at major hazard facilities, attorneys and insurance adjusters have consistently sought the services of Gexcon to provide them with the expertise to assist in incident investigations, including large loss investigations ranging from residential fires to chemical processing, petrochemical, manufacturing and other industrial facilities.
Gexcon can help with all aspects of incident investigations, from coordinating the investigation to conducting root cause analysis, providing recommendations, implementing strategies to prevent further incidents from occurring, and acting as expert witnesses in ongoing investigations.
Our expert
Scott G. Davis, Ph.D., P.E., CFEI
CEO – Principal Engineer @ Gexcon US
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Dr. Scott Davis specializes in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and the engineering analysis and testing of combustion, thermal, and fluid processes.
Dr Davis applies his expertise to the investigation, prevention, and risk assessment of fires, explosions, and dispersion hazards such as flammable vapours and carbon monoxide exposures. He is responsible for fire and explosion-related consulting activities, which include post-incident investigative work as well as performing risk assessments and safety studies for offshore Oil & Gas installations, petrochemical facilities, and various other industries.
These studies include explosion risk assessment, blast and venting analyses, assessment of combustible dust explosions and ignition, toxic and flammable gas releases and dispersion, hydrogen safety, ventilation, detector placement, and carbon monoxide dispersion with the assistance of the world-leading FLACS-CFD software developed by Gexcon.
Explosion expert
Gexcon has extensive experience in dust explosions, aerosol explosions, vapour cloud and gas explosions. We can help you investigate explosions ranging from small vessel explosions to large explosions at chemical processing and petrochemical facilities and other industrial facilities such as wastewater treatment works. Our licensed Certified Fire and Explosions Investigators (CFEI) and Professional Engineers (PE) have investigated numerous of these incidents involving propane, methane, natural gas, ammonium nitrate and flammable liquids.
Gexcon investigated the detonation of approximately 20-30 tons of ammonium nitrate at the West Fertilizer Company storage and distribution facility in West, Texas
Gexcon investigated the cause of the 2006 explosion of an ink and paint manufacturing facility in Danvers, MA
Gexcon investigated the cause of the 2014 explosion of a food truck in Philadelphia, PA.
Fire cause and origin expert
Our experts have investigated hundreds of fire incidents ranging from vehicle and residential fires to larger-scale fires and explosions at chemical processing, petrochemical and other industrial facilities. Our team in the US have participated in code-making entities such as NFPA 921 (Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations) and is knowledgeable on the use of established methodologies and fundamental scientific principles for fire origin and cause investigations.
We can assist you in designing and performing unique experiments to test the fire origin and cause hypotheses. In addition to traditional fire investigation, we routinely use innovative techniques such as 3D surveying methods, photogrammetry, video and image analysis, and three-dimensional computer animation to resolve and explain complex problems.
Engineers at Gexcon also have extensive experience evaluating the failure of electrical crimp connectors, which include studying the oxide layer growth, the contact resistance of the connections, the degradation of the electrical connection and insulating material, and the flammability characteristics of the insulation
Carbon monoxide expert
Our experts have investigated the cause of carbon monoxide (CO) exposures that allegedly resulted from poor combustion in furnaces, boilers, portable space heaters, portable generators, and motor vehicles. Our experience can assist you in:
- Identifying the source of CO leaks
- Testing and quantifying CO emissions and migration
- Determining the emission and subsequent migration of CO in various types of structures including residential, commercial, and industrial facilities by utilizing FLACS-CFD software.
LNG expert
Gexcon staff have a long record of scientific publications and participation in LNG safety expert panels, including membership in the technical committee responsible for the U.S. standard on LNG facility siting (NFPA 59A).
Dust explosions expert
For more than 40 years, the experts at Gexcon have led pioneering work in dust explosion safety. We can help with all aspects of incident investigations and litigation supports for dust explosion incidents, such as:
- Coordinating the investigation to conduct root cause analysis
- Reconstruction of incidents with FLACS-DustEx, a CFD-based dust explosion simulation tool
- Providing recommendations
- Implementing strategies to prevent further incidents from occurring
- Acting as expert witnesses in ongoing investigations and legal representation
Vehicle and heavy machinery expert
Gexcon can perform investigations of motor vehicle fires, including passenger cars and trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, tractor-trailers, heavy equipment, buses, and motor homes. We are experienced in current automotive technology, including hybrids, clean diesel, fuel cells, and LPG, LNG, and CNG-fueled vehicles.
Our experts have employed the following techniques in previous fire investigations:
- Vehicle fluid sampling and analysis
- Chemical analysis of fire debris
- Metallurgical examination of fire debris
- X-ray analysis of vehicle components and fire debris
- Exemplar testing
Chemical releases and exposure expert
The hazards associated with chemical releases are of concern for both indoor and outdoor environments. Outdoor chemical releases can be the result of industrial operations, fires, explosions, spills or tank and silo failures. Indoor releases can occur from material off-gassing, chemical interactions or overheated consumer products.
Our team has experience in characterizing various chemical emissions, modelling the resulting dispersion, and evaluating exposures at various locations from the source. We have numerically modelled both outdoor and indoor releases as well as subsequent migration using the industry-recognized 3D CFD consequence modelling tool, FLACS-CFD, which has been extensively validated against experimental data.
HVAC and appliance failures expert
HVAC systems include all of the equipment used to ventilate, heat and cool a building, move the air within the building and filter the air. These systems include air conditioning units, central heaters and furnaces, heat pumps, space heaters, fireplaces, and chimneys.
We can help with the determination of fire origin and cause, failure analysis, mechanical system design, and carbon monoxide issues relating to these systems.
Reactive chemicals expert
Hazards associated with chemicals must be understood in order to safely handle, use, or store these materials. For example, under certain conditions, chemicals can spontaneously decompose or explode, while other chemicals may react violently when mixed with incompatible materials. These conditions are generally referred to as chemical or thermal runaway reactions.
Our experts have the experience to help determine the cause of such runaway reactions. By conducting experiments or running detailed chemical kinetic models, we can help predict the likelihood and what conditions are required to result in a given thermal runaway condition. We also have experimental and CFD modelling experience in analyzing mitigation measures for runaway reactions.
In addition, Gexcon has been involved in the CHEERS (Chemical Hazards Evaluation and Emergency Relief Systems) project performing large-scale experiments. One of the main objectives of this project was to develop guidance for and test the performance of an emergency relief system using jet condenser quenching for the safe disposal of the relief stream from runaway chemical reactions in order to minimize emissions to the environment.
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